DEVELOPMENT OF THE CREATOE. 69 



sification of animal and vegetable species must of necessity 

 have gradually increased in the course of the organic history 

 of the earth, and could only attain its highest perfection in 

 most recent times. 



The above-mentioned laws of development, together with 

 some other general ones, which have been expressly admitted 

 and justly emphasized by Agassiz, and some of which have 

 first been set forth by him, are, as we shall see later, only 

 explicable by the Theory of Descent, and without it remain 

 perfectly incomprehensible. The conjoint action of In- 

 heritance and Adaptation, as explained by Darwin, can 

 alone be their true cause. But they all stand in sharp and 

 irreconcilable opposition to the hypothesis of creation main- 

 tained by Agassiz, as well as to the idea of a personal 

 Creator who acts for a definite purpose. If we seriously 

 wish to explain those remarkable phenomena and their 

 inter-connection by Agassiz's theory, then we are necessarily 

 driven to the curious supposition that the Creator himself 

 has developed, together with the organic nature which he 

 created and modelled. We can, in that case, no longer rid 

 ourselves of the idea that the Creator himself, like a human 

 being, designed, improved, and finally, with many altera- 

 tions, carried out his plans. " Man grows as higher grow 

 his aims," and the same supposition, so unworthy of a God, 

 must be applied to him. Although, from the reverence 

 with which, in every page, Agassiz speaks o± the Creator, 

 it might appear that, on his theory, we attain to the 

 sublimest conception of the divine activity in nature, yet 

 the contrary is in truth the case. The divine Creator is 

 degi'aded to the level of an idealized man, of an organism 

 progressing in development ! ' 



